


there’ll be no sunlight if i lose you, baby

by whysolonely



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Established Relationship, M/M, Mark Centric, One-Sided Relationship, Sad, Sad Ending, idk its just like, idk what else to tag this, this is my first work sorry if it’s ass, youll feel bad for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-05 21:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15179924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whysolonely/pseuds/whysolonely
Summary: mark really doesn't want to give up, but all good things must come to an end.





	there’ll be no sunlight if i lose you, baby

Donghyuck didn’t know when he’d had enough of Mark. Mark knew how he was; sarcastically affectionate and sometimes just straight up clingy. He’d never had a problem with that. That was just how Donghyuck was. Since they’d known each other at the age of 11, when Mark moved to Seoul from Canada, that was just how Donghyuck was. 

 

Mark was never as clingy or affectionate of a person as Donghyuck was. When Donghyuck would wrap his arms around his waist in public, Mark would get frigid and jokingly pushed him away. When Donghyuck would try to give a quick peck to  Mark on the cheek, Mark would duck away from him like his life depended on it. It never bothered Donghyuck, because he knew that at night when only a stripe of the moonlight lit up the room, Mark would be the one climbing in his bed anyways. It never bothered Donghyuck, because just as Mark had accepted him, he’d accepted Mark. 

 

When Mark and Donghyuck were 17, there was a week where Mark didn’t hear from Donghyuck for a full week. His chest hurt for seven days straight, and he didn’t know why he felt like only half of him was walking around. Mark knew that he couldn’t chalk it up to him missing his best friend, but every other thought was scary and new. None of it made sense and he was thinking about Donghyuck every second of the day. He considers it his first heartbreak, even if he didn’t know it at the time. It was a painful week for Mark, to say the least. 

 

So when Donghyuck showed up at Mark’s front door on the eighth day, Mark didn’t have to say anything. There was no explanation to why even though it was a perfect sunny day out, he pulled Donghyuck into his arms at lighting speed. There were no words as he breathed into Donghyuck as if he hadn’t taken a breath all week. Mark finally knew why his world felt like it’d been turned upside down, like he’d been on display as puzzle with half of his pieces missing. It took one look at Donghyuck, the half of him that had been missing, before they completed the puzzle.

 

“Yeah, that’s ‘Hyuck’. H-Y-U-C-K. Thank you.”

 

Mark is trying, he is. He knows that they’re slipping. He can see it,  _ feel it _ , and he’s fighting so hard for them. He’s fighting so hard but it feels futile; like throwing punches underwater or running in a dream. 

 

Mark invites Donghyuck to the cafe downtown, and like all of the other times, he prays that maybe this is the beginning of them again. In the pits of his heart, there’s almost no hope, but he’s gotten good at digging up some from where there isn’t any. 

 

The lady at the front bar delivers the cup of to-go coffee to Mark, who thanks her with a small smile. He stares at the scrawl in black marker on the cup for a moment, before looking out the window.

 

When Mark sees Donghyuck’s car pull up from the window of his booth in the back of the small cafe, his fingers curl around the plastic of 5 roses. Out of desperation, he’d bought them, hoping that Donghyuck would like them enough to see what an effort Mark was making, and to start anew.

 

Mark knew it was a long shot; he also knew it was worth a try.

 

Donghyuck walks up to the building with his hands in his pockets, his posture stiff and nervous. It takes everything in Mark not to jump up and greet him at the door. Instead, he looks down at his hands and twists the silver ring on his thumb.

 

“Hey.”

 

Mark doesn’t know if he imagined himself jumping out of his own skin, but he has no time to mull it over. Donghyuck slides into the opposite side of the booth across from Mark and pulls his sleeves over his hands. Donghyuck, in Mark’s mind, had always been the image of summer. Born in June with the most golden skin Mark had ever seen, he couldn’t think of anyone the season belonged to more. Now, curled up in a black hoodie, Donghyuck looks like nothing more than winter, and to Mark, it feels like a punch in the gut.

 

Mark asks Donghyuck how he’s doing and the words fumble as they leave his mouth. He wants to kick himself for sounding so unsure of himself, and pulls out the few flowers. The warmth leaves his lap and he bites his lips nervously, waiting for Donghyuck to raise his hands, to open them, to take his gift. He doesn’t.  _ Ouch. _ Mark places the flowers gently on the table in front of Donghyuck. He tells Donghyuck that that he got them some flowers, how they reminded him of him, how he ordered coffee for him. He’s trying not to ramble, but he’s nervous. 

 

Donghyuck forces a smile without teeth. He doesn’t look at the cup. “Thank you.” If he means it, it doesn’t show. Mark wishes that Donghyuck would open up again, run his mouth like he used to, to where the point Mark would jokingly tell him that he talked too much. He wishes that Donghyuck had more to say to him than the bare minimum, but he knows he’s asking for too much.

 

Mark tries again, asking, “how have you been?” His voice is more stable this time, but quieter. It’s one or the other, he assumes. The question is genuine, and he waits for an answer. It’s so foreign for him not to know what’s going on with Donghyuck, and he desperately wants to know what’s going on in his life. He doesn’t know if he can call him his boyfriend anymore, but he’s trying. He doesn’t want to be just friends again. 

 

Donghyuck lets out a sigh. “I’ve been okay,” he says, and shifts in his seat. Mark stares at him expectantly before he adds, “I’ve just been around.” Mark’s heart drops, because he knows that’s it.  His mind scrambles for more questions to asks, to show that he still cares, but his mental balance scale struggles to even out the decision of talking too much and not showing enough interest. 

 

Mark smiles excitedly as he tells Donghyuck about the Michael Jackson poster he saw at the thrift shop downtown, and how that, too, reminded him of Donghyuck. He adds an proposal for them to go check it out at some point, and Donghyuck breaks the uneasy eye contact. In Mark’s voice is part excitement, part hopefulness, and part pleading. He knows this is crossing the line, he knows this is doing too much, but he can’t stop  _ trying. _

 

Donghyuck looks down. “Yeah, maybe sometime.” Mark can feel his mouth starting to go dry. He’s running out of topics, and Donghyuck just looks uncomfortable. He sits on his hands. His brain is in its last steps of sending the words to his mouth, but just as it finishes, Donghyuck lifts his head. He takes a deep breath and looks outside the window to his left before speaking. “Hey, I have to go. This was..fun though,” He says, and picks up the flowers. “Thanks for this too.” Donghyuck gets up from his seat.

 

“Of course,” Mark is stunned by Donghyuck’s sudden departure. The conversation, or lack thereof, was so short it left his head spinning and wondering what he could have said to make Donghyuck stay. There was a lot of that now; Mark still couldn’t come up with an answer. He feels like if he asked Donghyuck, he wouldn’t have one either. Somehow, things had gotten complicated that way. 

 

In that moment, Donghyuck leaving told Mark everything he needed to know. It was already over. With every faltered smile, every hug pushed to the side, every missed kiss, it was over. It had been over for a long time. Mark just didn’t want to admit it. In every sense of the word, he’s heartbroken.

 

Without Mark’s pressure, he had no plans of coming back. If it weren’t for Mark to begin with, he didn’t even want to know how long it would have been since the two had last seen each other. Mark’s chest gets tight as he watches him leave, and he knows that this is the last time he’s going to see him again. He gets dizzy at the thought.

 

Mark offers a weak goodbye to Donghyuck, who in return responds with a finger wave before putting his hand back into his pocket. He’s holding the flowers so carelessly that Mark can’t bear to watch. His throat is dry and he finds himself with tears in his eyes. It’s his first instinct that he needs to hightail it out of there, because although he’s in the back of the cafe and nobody’s paying him any mind, he doesn’t really feel like breaking down in public. Blinking furiously, he exits the cafe with a twinkle of the door’s chimes.

 

Mark is sobbing before he even gets to the parking lot. He can barely see his way to his car, and when he gets into the driver’s seat, everything is even more blurry than before. His head hurts and his heart aches.

 

Of all the thoughts running through Mark’s head, only one sticks out to him.  _ He doesn’t love me anymore. _ Mark breaks his own heart by confirming what he already knew. It hurts so much more to admit it to himself, especially when it was the truth that he had fought so hard against. He can’t think of a single time he thought the opposite; he’d always loved Donghyuck. The knowledge that the feeling isn’t mutual floors him.

  
  


Mark doesn’t know what he did wrong, and he thinks it’s going to be an eternity before he figures it out. If it was the hugs and the kisses that he only returned in private, he’d do anything to go back and do it all again. He doesn’t know if it was because he wasn’t affectionate enough, or if he was too serious, or maybe he has some stupid and annoying habit that he doesn’t know about. He decides that none of it matters. He’d do it all again, the right way. He’d do whatever Donghyuck asked, when he asked, where he’d asked. Mark hates himself. He blames himself for whatever it was that made Donghyuck stopped loving him, and he blamed himself even more for still trying.

 

There were some times Mark wished he’d never met Donghyuck. He wished and wished that he could erase him from his memory, that he could just make his own life easier by getting rid of Donghyuck once and for all.

 

But he loved him. He loved him with his entire heart and soul, and he didn’t know if this pain was worth the years of happiness he had with Donghyuck. Even if it meant leaving all that happiness behind, those were years he could never forget. There was nothing miserable about the love they shared.

 

Mark never considered himself a dreamer until now; he dreamed and he wished and he hoped and he prayed on every shooting star, every regular star, every fun sun and every full moon that love could be love again. He found himself falling asleep thinking of Donghyuck more often than not, and hoped that by some stroke of luck, Donghyuck would be waking up the next morning thinking of him too. He set himself up for heartbreak every time, but there was something that kept him holding on. Maybe it was Donghyuck’s smile burned into his brain, or maybe it was his voice in his head that was stuck in there like a bad song. Either way, he was hopeless.

 

Still and yet, Mark tried. He tried and he tried and he tried and he put himself through hell and heartache for a boy who didn’t love him back. He doesn’t think he’ll ever know where he went wrong, and that he'll missing his summerboy for eternity, aching.

 

It's not the easiest thing in the world, but Mark decides to stop trying. 

 

Donghyuck and Mark now are more like a puzzle and a cogwheel. Though they both have their perfect fits, they’re no longer each other. Mark never changed, and no other puzzle will ever look, feel, or fit quite like Donghyuck. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is my first work so if u read this far thank u, i take constructive criticism cowboy emoji
> 
>  
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/453x3/)


End file.
